Kurumba Headdress, Burkina Faso

This elegantly-designed abstract sculpture is an exceptionally fine example of the well-known type of headdress element known as adoné, created by the Kurumba people of the northernmost region of what is today Burkina Faso. This representation of an important totemic animal was worn atop a dancer's head during important events honoring recently deceased ancestors. As a sculptural object they were also used as portable altars, or as a focal point within a larger ancestral spirit house, to commemorate a particular ancestor, whose name would be given to the sculpture during an elaborate inauguration process. The geometric designs which were incised or (as in the case of the present example) painted upon the surface of the sculpture may relate to cosmological ideas or clan origin stories, although their specific meanings are uncertain.

The Lawrence Kurumba headdress is among the most elegant examples in from the early corpus of these iconic sculptures, with a harmonious triad of sweeping, elongated forms - the neck, snout, and two horns - dramatically representing the stylized essence and bounding movement of an antelope.